The Rest of the Story

Abstract

The 2001 anthrax attacks brought public health into the media spotlight in away unmatched since the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s. This moment presented Americans with opportunities to better understand the strengths and weaknesses of the nation’s public health infrastructure, as well as to better understand the political and policy backgrounds against which this infrastructure operates. The authors systematically examined how thoroughly this underlying political context was covered by two major U.S. news papers: the New York Times, widely considered the nation’s paper of record; and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the home newspaper of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).In particular, the authors explored whether and how these news sources drew connections between political decision making and functioning of the CDC. They conducted quantitative and qualitative analysis of 157 news articles, supplemented by interviews with four reporters and one editor close to the story. Political context was included inconsistently and in sometimes strikingly different ways by the two newspapers, and lines of accountability extending beyond the CDC itself were not clearly traced. The authors theorize that these patterns in coverage of political context reflect the nature of reporting on public health issues; the different relationships of the two papers to the CDC; and the unwillingness of key public health sources to articulate certain claims in the heat of the crisis.

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